The history of the origin of the letter e in Russian. The history of the origin and use of the letter "e" in Russian
September 29th, 2016 , 07:02 pm
The Bolsheviks, having come to power, “scrambled” the alphabet, removed the “yat” and fita and Izhitsa, but did not touch the letter Yo. It was under Soviet rule that the dots over yo in order to simplify typing disappeared in most words. Although formally no one forbade or abolished it.
The situation changed dramatically in 1942. Supreme Commander-in-Chief Stalin received German maps on the table, in which German cartographers entered the names of our settlements to the point. If the village was called "Demino", then Demino (and not Demino) was written in both Russian and German. The Supreme appreciated the enemy's meticulousness. As a result, on December 24, 1942, a decree was issued requiring the mandatory use of the letter Yё everywhere, from school textbooks to the Pravda newspaper. Well, of course, on the cards. By the way, no one has ever canceled this order!
Often the letter "e", on the contrary, is inserted into words in which it is not needed. For example, "scam" instead of "scam", "being" instead of "being", "guardianship" instead of "guardianship". The first Russian world chess champion was actually called Alexander Alekhine and was very indignant when his noble surname was spelled incorrectly, “commonly” - Alekhin. In general, the letter "ё" is contained in more than 12 thousand words, in about 2.5 thousand names of citizens of Russia and the former USSR, in thousands of geographical names.
The categorical opponent of the use of this letter when writing is designer Artemy Lebedev. For some reason she didn't like him. I must say that on the computer keyboard it is really located inconveniently. Of course, it is possible to do without it, as, for example, the text will be understandable, even if it does not contain all glans bkv. But is it worth it?
In recent years, a number of authors, in particular Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Yuri Polyakov and others, some periodicals, as well as the scientific publishing house "Great Russian Encyclopedia" publish their texts with the obligatory use of the discriminated letter. Well, the creators of the new Russian electric car gave their brainchild a name from this one letter.
Some statistics
In 2013, the letter Yoyo turns 230 years old!
She stands at the 7th (lucky!) place in the alphabet.
In Russian, there are about 12,500 words with the letter ё, of which about 150 words begin with it and about 300 words end with ё!
For every hundred characters of text, there is an average of 1 letter ё. .
There are words in our language with two letters Ё: “three-star”, “four-bucket”.
In Russian, there are several traditional names in which the letter Y is present:
Artyom, Parmen, Peter, Savel, Seliverst, Semyon, Fedor, Yarem; Alena, Matryona, Thekla and others.
Optional use letters ё leads to erroneous readings and the inability to restore the meaning of the word without additional explanations, for example:
Loan-loan; perfect-perfect; tears-tears; sky-sky; chalk-chalk; donkey donkey; merry merry...
And, of course, a classic example from "Peter the Great" by A.K. Tolstoy:
Under such a sovereign take a break!
It was meant - " let's take a break". Feel the difference?
And how do you read "We'll Sing"? Do we all eat? Do we eat everything?
And the name of the French actor will be Depardieu, not Depardieu. (see Wikipedia)
And, by the way, A. Dumas has the name of the cardinal not Richelieu at all, but Richelieu. (see Wikipedia)
And it is necessary to pronounce the name of the Russian poet correctly Fet, not Fet.
The letter Ё owes its appearance to changes in Russian phonetics. Once upon a time, after soft consonants, O was not pronounced. That is why they said, for example, not a dog, but a dog. But at some point, E turned into O: this is how the modern pronunciation of such words as honey, everything, and many others arose. True, for a long time there was no new designation for this sound. The writers calmly managed with the letters O and E: bees, honey. But in the 18th century, these words began to be written differently, using the combination io (everything-everything). It was then that it became obvious: a new letter is needed! Princess Dashkova and the writer Karamzin suggested replacing the two signs with one. This is how the letter Y was born.
What other options were considered?
Of course. At different times, different ideas appeared to replace the letter Y. We could now write the same pronoun “everything” as “everything”. Both in the 19th and in the 20th century, a wide variety of proposals were heard: ö , ø , ε , ę , ē , ĕ . However, none of these options have been approved.
Many did not like the letter Y and still do not like it. Why?
For a long time, "yokan" was considered a sign of common speech. The letter was new, so it was treated with suspicion and even some contempt - as something new, not in line with Russian linguistic traditions.
But there is another, very simple reason for dislike - it is inconvenient to write the letter Yo, for this you need to perform three actions at once: write the letter itself, and then put two dots above it. Such a complex letter was perceived as a burden, some linguists noted. It was not easy for those who typed texts with Yo on typewriters. Soviet typists had to press three keys at once: letters e, carriage return, quotation marks.
By the way, even now they joke about those who type texts with Yo on a computer: “Beware of people who type words with Yo: if they reached it on the keyboard, they will reach you!”
Yo is a full-fledged letter, the same as all the others?
Complex issue. Since yo appeared, opinions about it were expressed the most contradictory. Some linguists did not consider it an independent letter. For example, in an article of 1937, A. A. Reformatsky wrote: “Is there a letter in the Russian alphabet yo? No. There is only a diacritical sign "umlaut" or "trema" (two dots above the letter), which is used to avoid possible misunderstandings ... "
There are such symbols above letters in many languages. And native speakers of these languages, as a rule, treat them very jealously. In France, for example, the government's attempt to abandon the sign "aksan sirkonfleks" (the house above the letter) as part of the spelling reform caused a real storm: the French were ready to take to the streets to protect their favorite sign.
Does our Yo have defenders?
There are, and more! The fighters for the "rights" of the letter Y are called yofikators ( don't forget to reach for the letter Ё when writing this word). Yofikators strive to ensure that the use of the letter yo became ubiquitous and obligatory. The fact is that they perceive words with E instead of Yo as an insult to the Russian language and even Russia as a whole. For example, the writer, head of the "Union of Yofikators" V.T. Chumakov calls the neglect of the letter Yo not only a spelling, but also a political, spiritual, moral mistake.
Do linguists agree with him?
No, linguists are just not so categorical. The editor-in-chief of the Gramota.ru portal Vladimir Pakhomov calls the statement that E instead of Yo is a gross spelling mistake one of the myths about the Russian language. Of course, there are arguments both for and against. For example, obligatory Yo would help memorize the correct pronunciation of some names, surnames and names of settlements. But there is also a danger: if Yo is made obligatory, then the texts of the classics may begin to “modernize”, and then Yo will appear where it should not be at all.
What words are mispronounced Y?
There are quite a few such words. You can often hear scam instead of scam or guardianship instead of guardianship. In fact, there is no letter Yo in these words, and pronunciation with Yo is considered a gross spelling mistake. In the same list, words such as grenadier ( not a grenadier!) , expired in the meaning of time (one cannot say elapsed period)settled ( by no means settled!),life and being . Here, by the way, it is appropriate to recall the director Yakin from the film "Ivan Vasilyevich Changes His Profession." Yakin say the word life absolutely right - through E, and not through E.
BUTnewborn also without Yo?
You can also write this word with E instead of Yo, but now it is pronounced with Y. That's right - a newborn, not a newborn!
Words are also pronounced with Yo smutty ( remember it, this word is often mispronounced!) point, worthless, windsurfing, bled out.
I'm completely confused. Still, if I don’t want to reach for Yo on the keyboard, am I not betraying the Russian language and the Motherland?
Of course no! There is no mistake or betrayal in refusing Yo. The letter Yo cannot be dispensed with except in textbooks for elementary school students and in manuals for foreigners who do not know how to read and pronounce Russian words. In other cases, the decision is yours. However, if in a correspondence about the weather you suddenly want to write something like “Tomorrow we will finally rest from the cold,” try to still reach out to Yo.
The letter Yo entered the modern alphabet only on December 24, 1942. By order of the People's Commissar of Education of the RSFSR, Yo was introduced into compulsory school practice for study.
The history of the appearance of the letter Yo in the Russian alphabet is a very mysterious phenomenon in our spelling. Over time, she has gained many legends and conjectures. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the legalization of the letter Yo has not yet happened. According to the most official version, this letter appeared at the end of the 18th century. And for centuries it has been associated with the name of Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin. But today it is generally accepted that he was rather the first authoritative person who began to use the letter. For the first time, its use was proposed by Princess Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova, who at one time was the president of the Russian Academy of Sciences during the reign of Catherine the Great.
The letter was coined on November 29, 1783 by Princess Dashkova at a meeting of the Academy of Literature, where G. R. Derzhavin, D. I. Fonvizin, Ya. B. Knyazhnin, Metropolitan Gabriel and others were present. not two, but one letter. Dashkova's arguments seemed convincing enough to the Academicians, and her proposal was approved by the general meeting. But why did Yo begin to be written as E with only two dots?
It is believed that Ekaterina Romanovna allegedly drank champagne from the French company Moët & Chandon before talking about the letter E with her colleagues. The surname "Moët" is not read according to the general rules of the French language. The French, in order to read it correctly, put two dots above the beech E. Perhaps Princess Dashkova simply borrowed these two points from the French language. According to another version, she took an analogy from the German language, with the alphabet of which the princess was familiar. German has the letter O with two dots. This letter means a sound that is as close as possible to what the letter Yo conveys in Russian.
The letter Yo appeared in print only in 1795. The first book with a new letter printed in words was the manuscript of the poet Ivan Dmitriev "My trinkets". The very first word, above which two dots were blackened, was the word EVERYTHING. And the newly minted letters were introduced into the alphabet only by the 1860s. V.I. Dahl placed Yo together with the letter E in the first edition of the Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language. But Leo Tolstoy in 1875 in his "New ABC" sent it to the 31st place, between the yat and the letter e. In general, the use of a letter with dots in typographic and publishing was associated with difficulties due to its non-standard height. Therefore, the letter Yo officially entered the modern alphabet only on December 24, 1942. By order of the People's Commissar of Education of the RSFSR, Yo was introduced into compulsory school practice for study, and took the 7th ordinal place in the alphabet. And even after that, many publications used it only in the case of extreme cases, and more often in encyclopedias.
Only on July 9, 2007, the Minister of Culture of Russia A.S. Sokolov expressed an opinion on the need to use the letter Y in written speech. But, so far, there have been no cardinal changes with the letter Y. According to the current rules of Russian punctuation and spelling in texts in normal printing, this letter can still be used selectively.
For curiosity, it is worth mentioning that such a biased attitude towards the letter with dots left its mark on the spelling of many Russian words. And it is unlikely that many of you today will correctly pronounce the original variants of some famous surnames. For example, does everyone know that there was such a cardinal as Richelieu, the philosopher Montesquieu, the poet Robert Burns, the microbiologist and chemist Louis Pasteur, the painter Roerich, the scientist Roentgen. By the way, Leo Tolstoy is actually Leo, and the inventor of jeans is the nobleman Levin, and not the Jew Levin, and even the actor Depardieu, not Depardieu! This is the power of the letter Yo.
From the first grade, everyone knows 33 letters of the Russian alphabet. It is hard to imagine how to pronounce or write words without at least one of them. Still, there are those who like to ignore the modest but completely irreplaceable letter “ё” when writing, which leads to an irreparably distorted meaning of the text.
The history of the birth of a small letter began in 1783 in the house of the enlightened Russian princess Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova. The meeting of the Academy of Russian Literature headed by her has just ended. Derzhavin and Fonvizin discussed the project of publishing the "Dictionary of the Russian Academy" in 6 volumes. The project had the working title "Complete Explanatory Slavic-Russian Dictionary".
When the debate subsided, Ekaterina Romanovna asked those present to write the word "Christmas tree". Everyone knew that the word was written as "iolka". So pundits took the test for a joke. Then Dashkova asked a simple question. Its meaning made academics think. Indeed, is it reasonable to designate one sound with two letters when writing?
The proposal of the princess to introduce into the alphabet a new letter "e" with two dots on top to denote the sound "io" was appreciated by connoisseurs of literature. Gavriil Romanovich Derzhavin immediately picked up the brilliant idea and began to widely use the new letter in personal correspondence.
The pioneer of Russian printed publications, where the letter “ё” took its rightful place, was in 1795 a book by Ivan Dmitriev under the funny title “My trinkets”. We owe the popularization of the new letter to the outstanding writer Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin. In 1797, he published his poems, replacing the traditional two letters “io” in the word “sliozy” with one innovative “ё”.
Karamzin's book was published in significant circulation. His revolutionary step had a resonance in the enlightened circles of society. And the Russian language has been colossally enriched, thanks to the priceless letter, which accurately and succinctly indicates the meaning of a great many words.
Until recently, it was Karamzin who was considered the parent of the letter “ё”. In particular, the Great Soviet Encyclopedia authoritatively stated this. Now historical justice has been restored. And if Princess Dashkova can be called the mother of a new letter, then Karamzin, by right, is her godfather.
In Russia, since 1942, the order of the People's Commissar of Education has been in force to this day, prescribing the use of the letter "e" in school education without fail. Indeed, not using the letter “ё” can lead to a distortion of the meaning of some phrases and expressions. So, the famous phrase of Alexei Nikolayevich Tolstoy from the novel "Peter the Great": "Under such a Sovereign we will rest!", Printed in the last word with the letter "e" instead of "e" - what semantic color does it acquire?
To avoid mistakes in interpreting what is written, remember more often the unique letter of the Russian alphabet. It will be clear to the readers of the text when you mean “donkey”, when “donkey”, where you want to talk about “sky”, where about “sky”. You will always be understood!
E, e (called: e) is one of the letters found in all modern Cyrillic alphabets. 6th in a row in the Russian alphabet, as well as in Belarusian and Bulgarian; 7th - in Ukrainian, Macedonian and Serbian; It is also used in writing among non-Slavic peoples.
In the Church and Old Slavonic alphabets - the 6th, is called respectively "is" and "ѥst" (from the Greek. "εστι"); the Cyrillic symbol - , has the meaning of the number 5, in the Glagolitic it looks like , and corresponds to the number 6.
It came from the letter Ε, ε (epsilon) of the Greek alphabet (the appearance of the Glagolitic spelling is sometimes also associated with Semitic scripts). In a form identical to the Latin "E, e", it has been used since 1707-1711, when the civil script was introduced.
Previously, only an open style was used for a printed lowercase letter: a narrow one, in the form of a square E, and a wide one, in the form of an elongated rounded Є (it was written only at the beginning of a word and in specific grammatical forms, sometimes after vowels). The development of small handwritten and printed e took place in the 17th century. in old Russian cursive, and before that its form was close to either lowercase Greek ε (epsilon) or є.
Pronunciation
In Russian, pronunciation depends on the stress and position of the letter in the word:
Being under stress, after vowels and at the beginning of words it denotes the sound pair [ye], is reduced in the pre-stressed 1st syllable to [yi e], in other unstressed syllables it sounds like [y];
After consonants (except for w, c and sh, and individual borrowings, like molybdenum, amber, panel, tempo, highway, Graves' disease, etc., and abbreviations such as esdek, eser), softens the previous consonant and sound under stress [e ], (in the 1st pre-stressed syllable - [and e]; in other unstressed syllables - [b]);
Under stress after w, c and w (and other consonants in the above individual cases) means [e], in the 1st pre-stressed syllable - [s e], in other syllables without stress - [b];
Also, sometimes the letter Yo is written like E. The reason for this is the acceleration of writing, due to the exclusion of dots, but when printing texts, such a replacement is usually not recommended.
The meaning of the letter in the Belarusian language is basically the same, only due to the greater phonetic nature of the language, the reading rules are somewhat simpler: it is impossible for the preceding consonant to be softened (in this case, it is written e, not e: tendenciya, shest), with a strong reduction, other letters are also used (shascі - six, Myafodziy - Methodius).
In Ukrainian, it is similar to the Russian letter E (and the equivalent of the Russian letter E is the letter Є).
In the Serbian language, it is always pronounced as [e], since in Serbian writing softening and iotation are indicated explicitly, with special letters for soft consonants (“lately” - “at the last time”).
As in Russian, in Bulgarian, it softens the preceding consonant, and after vowels and at the beginning of the word it is pronounced with iot (ezik [yezik]). This sound is typical for the east of Bulgaria. In the west of the country, the pronunciation corresponds to the Russian "e".
Derived letters "E"
From the letter E of the Cyrillic alphabet in the writings of various peoples branched off: Ѥ (used in Old Russian, Old Slavonic, Old Serbian, etc.; until the 17th century it was used in the Serbian version of the Church-sl. language), Є (used in the current Ukrainian, old Serbian, Church Slavonic), Yo (in Russian and Belarusian); from the Glagolitic form came the inscription E (exists in the Russian and Belarusian languages, previously it was also in Bulgarian and Serbian).
In the near future, the mark È, used in the Macedonian language to distinguish between homonyms, may become an independent letter (“Everything that you write will be used (can be used) against you” - “Cè what you can write and use it against you!”). Sometimes it already occupies a separate position in a number of some computer fonts and encodings.
